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SCENE: Mitch BERG is riding a Lime scooter through downtown Minneapolis when he sees Avery LIBRELLE haggling with a PANHANDLER. BERG pulls over – before getting that look on his face that says “I already regret this”

SCENE: Mitch BERG is checking his oil. As he does so, Avery LIBRELLE pedals a “Nice Ride” bike up the sidewalk, obscured from BERG’s view by the hood of the car. LIBRELLE pedals over to BERG.

LIBRELLE: Merg! What’s all this secession talk?

BERG: There are those who think that as a result of a couple of generations of geographic sorting, the nation’s differences are so great it’s time for an amicable divorce. Let Blue America and Red America split up and try their luck as sovereign, ideally friendly, countries.

LIBRELLE: Hah! That’s treason! Treason, I say! We are one nation under Goddess, and the last time the traitors tried to leave the union the rest of us beat them back into line!

BERG: So there should always be one nation.

LIBRELLE: Absolutely.

BERG: One set of federal laws.

LIBRELLE: Yes.

BERG: So you support cracking down on “sanctuary cities” that flout federal law for their own ideological reasons?

LIBRELLE: [Visibly flinching] Racist! Traitor! Badthink!

BERG: Hey – it’s the middle of February. Those Nice Ride bikes were all taken off the road in November.

Before he can close the last gap along the sidewalk, MyLyssa Silberman – reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats – pulls up in a Subaru Outback.

SILBERMAN: [stepping out of the car]Merg!

BERG: Er…hi, MyLyssa. What’s up?

SILBERMAN: I’m doing a series on the purveyors of brisk, quippy rhetorical memes and their use in disseminating “fake news”.

BERG: Of course you are.

SILBERMAN: If I may. In the past, you have referred to the new municipal trash collection systems in cities like Bloomington, Saint Paul and other cities as [riffles through notes] “Soviet-style trash collection”. Also [squinting] “East German”, “Tony Soprano-Style”, “Cuban” and…

BERG: North Korean.

SILBERMAN: Here in my notebook it says “North Korean”.

BERG: Yep.

SILBERMAN: Are these racist references against Russians, Germans, Sicilians, Latinos and Asians? And how are they affected by climate change?

BERG: No, and not at all.

SILBERMAN: OK, we’ll come back to that. But what do those terms mean?

BERG: It’s a reference to the fact that in countries that try to repeal the free market – among them most “socialist” nations – there is no incentive to serve customers better. In planned, marketless economies, all goods and services are essentially rationed, and there’s no impetus to provide a good or service better, more efficiently, or even more cheerfully than anyone else, since there’s no upside to it; you get paid the same whether you’re a jerk or an Employee of the Month.

SILBERMAN: OK, but how does this relate to trash collection in the Twin Cities? We haven’t suspended the free market.

Beginning Jan. 30, [Waste Management, the hauler allocated to a large part of the East Side by the City Council’s “Sopranos”-style division of the city’s turf] skipped pickups on her street, Cottage Avenue East, for three weeks in a row. Rather than complete full collection Wednesday, drivers exited their vehicles to take pictures of overflowing trash carts and lids that couldn’t fully close. Some they emptied. Some they didn’t.Now, residents are bracing for financial penalties.“They drove through the alley yesterday, right past all the garbage cans that were out and not covered with or buried in snow, and only emptied two cans,” said Riggs on Thursday in an email to Ward 6 City Council member Kassim Busuri’s office. “Since that seems to be one of many excuses they use, yes, the lids are not closed, which is another thing they will charge us extra for. According to St. Paul policy, they must close. Otherwise it is $3

BERG: By the way, MyLyssa – my old trash collector would only upcharge me for an over-full container if a good chunk of the bag was visible. The new haulers are gloriously Minnesota passive-aggressive about it, and the customer service is atrocious, even in other neighborhoods.

Who picked up your trash, by the way?

SILBERMAN: I live in a condo downtown, so my trash just goes away.

BERG: Right. Continuing:

Busuri said he’s more than just sympathetic. He’s in the same boat.“I’ve had the same problem myself,” Busuri said, “where the trash was not picked up for going on three weeks. It bothers me to see a garbage hauler not fulfilling their obligation in the contract. There’s a section in the contract where we can charge the haulers for every collection they miss. I’m looking into that

SILBERMAN: See! They’ll fix it!

BERG: Sure. The city council will cross the actions of a previous city council, most of whom have gone on to positions of bureaucratic power that .can be used against them.

SILBERMAN: What do you mean?

BERG: OK, so imagine you were to park in Teri Gross’s parking spot…

SILBERMAN: That would be really bad.

BERG: See?

SILBERMAN: No.

BERG: It’ll never get fixed. There’s no market imperative to do anything, and plenty of bureaucratic imperatives not to.

SILBERMAN: So you’re saying you’re transphobic.

BERG: Are you by some chance working on getting a PR job with the city?

SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for a new casserole trivet for his Instant Pot (C) when MyLysa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, rounds the corner.

BERG: Er…Ms. Silberman.

SILBERMAN: [visibly searching for name] . Er – hello, Merg.

BERG: So – any comment about the allegations against Ralph “Satchmo” Northam?

SILBERMAN: In these inflammatory situations and divided times, it’s a journalist’s responsibility to make sure they get the facts straight.

BERG: OK. So – Brent Kavanaugh…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly screams, face red with rage] WE ALWAYS #BELIEVEWOMEN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!

BERG: Huh. So – Democrat governor Northam…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] Get the facts…

BERG: Northam, Ellison, Clinton…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] We can’t report a story where we’re not absolutely sure…

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting in line at Sorrento Cucina in the Minneapolis skyway. He sees Avery LIBRELLE coming around a corner. The thought of trying to slip away into the crowd visibly crosses his mind. But the lure of Sorrento’s delicious sausige conflicts him long enough that LIBRELLE notices him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Hey, Avery. What’s up?

LIBRELLE: With the incoming Democrat House of Representatives in Saint Paul, we’re going to stick it to all you gun-lickers!

BERG: Huh. Yeah, I see that the incoming Speaker, Melissa Hortman, says that even though Minnesota has one of the lowest murder rates in the United States, and perhaps the lowest murder rate among states with a top-20 metro area, she’s going to make “gun violene” her #1 priority.

Not the educational achievement gap. Not economic development in the Iron Range. Not even anything that’ll have a meaningful impact on urban crime.

LIBRELLE: Merg! Don’t you read the papers? Mass shootings are going on all over the place! Our schools are charnel houses! Our malls and gay bars are abattoirs! Everywhere you go, you are in danger from mass shootings!

BERG: The rate of spree killings isn’t correlated with the presence of civilian firearms – although it is correlated with “gun free zones” – but schools are the safest they’ve been in decades as re overall gun crime…

LIBRELLE: I don’t care about overall crime! Mass shootings are a constant factor of life! They can hit you any time! They can’t be predicted…

BERG: …other than being in “gun free zones”…

LIBRELLE: …and any time you leave your house you’re in constant danger of being gunned down by a white guy with an AR47!

BERG: Huh. Now, it’s academic to me, since all my guns fell into Mille Lacs over the summer – but it things really are that dire and serious out there…

LIBRELLE: They are! They are!

BERG: …then it’d be prudent and common sense to decide to carry a firearm to defend myself and those around me from this apparently constant and imminent threat.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is browsing for saw chains at Menards’ in the Midway, when Fudd GLUNK, vice chair of the Ramsey County chapter of “Sharia is Coming! Sharia is Coming!”, walks around the corner.

GLUNK: Merg!

BERG: Er…hey, Fudd…

GLUNK: Islam’s goal is to impose Sharia Law on all of us!

BERG: [Looking as if he knows he’ll regreat asking] And we know this how…

GLUNK: Because the Koran say so!

BERG: And because Muslims, like all the the world’s major faiths, always follow their holy texts to the absolute word, in exactly the same way.

GLUNK: Yes!

BERG: Which is why you will never, ever find a Catholic gettng divorced, a Jew eating bacon, an Evanglical protestant fornicating, or a Hindu eating beef, ever.

GLUNK: They’re different.

BERG: Different how?

GLUNK: Because the Koran tells them exactly what to do.

BERG: As opposed to the BIble, the Torah…

GLUNK: Their goal, every last one of them, is to impose Sharia on the world. By force if needed, by guile if possible. They Koran allows no exceptions.

BERG: So Muslims, unlike all the world’s faiths, are unanimously diligent in obeying their various holy texts.

GLUNK: Yes. The Koran says so. There is only one Koran.

BERG: That’s pure baked wind. There are six major branches of Islam, and probably six dozen minor ones – they may be more fragmented even than Christianity with its 3-4 major divisions. And one of the things they fragment over is waht “Jihad” actually means. To radical fundamentalist Sunni like ISIS, and radical fundamentalist Shi’a like the Iranians, it means “impose Islam by all means necessary”, while Sufis are downright pacifistic, and have gotten clobbered through the centuries by their Sunni and Shi’ite neighbors for the trouble.

And pretty much any imam can tack on his own interpretation beyond that – which was why the Imam at exactly one mosque in Minneapolis decided that touching pork, not eating it, and being in the presence of dogs rather than owning and being in contact with them, was a sin, thus becoming the only Muslims in America to actually practice such beliefs.

GLUNK: Haha, Merg. The Koran says that all apostates must be killed!

BERG: And among the acts that qualify as “apostasy” in purist Islam are living in a non-theocratic country – Muslim or not – much less voting for a government, since the only non-apostatic government is the Caliph. And all those Muslim girls in our public school systems? They and their parents are all in biiiiiig Koranic trouble, since educating girls is trayf.

GLUNK: Trayf?

BERG: Never mind.

GLUNK: The Koran allows Muslims to deceive the infidel! It’s called tak…er, takk…

BERG: Taqqiya.

GLUNK: Yeah!

BERG: So every Muslim in a non-theocratic Muslim country is a sleeper agent?

BERG: Yeah, that must be it. Interesting fact; the first mosque in the United States was in Ross, North Dakota; the Syrian/Lebanese community that built it pretty much intermarried with the local Swedes and Germans, and is pretty much indistinguishable from the locals 120 years later – in fact, I went to high school with some of their descendants and didn’t even know about it.

If they’re sleeper agents, they’re pretty dang effective.

GLUNK: You must be some kind of Muslim accomodationist!

BERG: Not at all. I’m a Christian, a conservative, and an American nationalist and exceptionalist. I’d never convert to Islam, and I can argue articulately exactly why. Our nation needs to accept immigrants – and insist that they assimilate. Which is why when we get a Muslim coming to the GOP, I welcome them – because “going to a Republican party event” is as assimilatory as buying a house in Burnsville with a freaking white picket fence.

GLUNK: You’re just a useful idiot for Sharia Law!

BERG: About half a percent of Minnesota’s population is Muslim. If we get Sharia imposed on us by half a percent of the population, we’ll probably deserve it.

But think about this for a moment. Radical Islam – the Wahhabi, the Shi’ite fundies in Iran – that is most definitely a danger.

But progressivism is a danger to this country right now – and if we take every single new immigrant to this country and, via ignorant intolerance, turn them into Democrat / “progressive’ voters, we’ll be doing for our enemies what they could never do for ourselves.

GLUNK: I suppose now you’re going to come up with some clever punchline to end this sketch?

SCENE: Mitch BERG is sitting in a cafe, doing his taxes on his laptop. Avery LIBRELLE walks in, and notices BERG before he can look away.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh…hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE. Words have meanings! Less stable followers will take those words and use them to justify violence!

BERG: So you people call yourself “the Resistance” – appropriating the name of a movement that violently assassinated members of an occupying military, blew up their trains and trucks, sank their ships, gunned them down and hand-grenaded them in cafes and on public transit, set bombs in their offices and factories, threw molotov cocktails into their trucks, and murdered those they saw as “collaborators” to ensure nobody would collaborate.

SCENE: Mitch BERG, driving down Larpenteur Avenue, is behind a Subaru. The Subaru, coated in liberal campaign stickers dating back to when the car was new (Wellstone’s first re-election campaign), suddenly blows a tire. It tries to drive for a block or two on the flapping flat until it pulls over

BERG pulls over behind it and gets out to offer help…

…and is visibly dismayed to see Cat SCAT, designated “fact checker” at progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, and office manager at a small phrenology practice, clamber out of the malfunctioning door.

SCAT: Merg! There is going to be an epidemic of white right-wing male violence!

BERG: Yeah, Big Left has been warning us about that for a long, long time. In the meantime, while we wait, and wait, and wait for that to happen, all the actual violence is coming from the left. James Hodgkinson, the murder of Brooks Jennings, Floyd Corkins and his attack on the Family Research Council, the various “Anti”-Fa thugs and their attacks, the assaults on Sarah Anderson and Shane Mekeland, and a long, long list of other attacks.

SCAT: Yeah, but you’ve got people on the right calling for violenbce!

BERG: Such as?

SCAT: Ted Nugent!

BERG: A man whose commercial peak was 40 years ago, whose peak infliuence as a pundit was 25 years ago, and who was cashiered from the leadership of the NRA for being a loose cannon.

SCAT: You conveniently omit Lester Crrunkins!

BERG: Who in the flaming hootie-hoo is Lester Crunkins?

SCAT: He’s a prominent Republican Party official who called for the violent establishmebt of a white homeland!

BERG: And where’s he from?

SCAT: Prominent!

BERG: Where?

SCAT: Er…

BERG: He’s from a town in western Oklahoma, he was the only person who showed up at the convention so he elected himself chair, and he’s been castigated by his county and state parties. And that’s only after they found out who he was in the first place, since the only reason anyone knows who he was was the media flocking to report on a “prominent” Republican calling for violence.

Which is intended to draw attention away from the likes of Maxine Waters and the other Democrats calling for violence – which is what I call “Berg’s Seventh Law”, by the way.

[SCENE: Mitch BERG is at his county elections office getting an early primary voting packet. He looks around and notices Avery LIBRELLE walking in. He briefly considers fleeing out the fire exit, but just tries to make himself look small and inconspicuous. It doesn’t work.]

LIBRELLE: Merg! Donald Trump is a traitor!

BERG: No he’s not. We’re not at war with Russia.

LIBRELLE: Yes we are!

BERG: How do you figure? Be specific.

LIBRELLE: They’ve been attacking our society and election system.

BERG: They’ve been attacking our society and election system since the 1930’s – ours and every one in Western Europe, with a brief break during the early nineties, maybe.

LIBRELLE: Espionage is a form of war.

BERG: Then we’re “at war” with every nation on earth, including all of our putative allies.

LIBRELLE: Merg! Merg! Trump’s performance in Helsinki was a threat to national security!

BERG: His press conference was a fairly awkward display of ego over common sense. But since you brought up national security, if you favor open borders…

SCENE: Mitch BERG is eating a plate of galbi and kimchi at Mirror of Korea on Snelling Avenue. Lost in a gustatory reverie, he fails to notice Avery LIBRELLE has entered the restaurant.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: (Shaken from his bliss) Oh, hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE: It’s time for us to find common ground on commonsense gun violence legislation.

BERG: Well, that’s great. So what do you propose for that “common ground”?’

LIBRELLE: Our common ground should include background checks, bringing back Obama’s law preventing the mentally ill from easy access to guns, bans on certain types of guns, online restrictions, stop exploiting the Second Amendment.

BERG: Huh.

LIBRELLE: Yes, these would be hard to do but we have to start somewhere.

BERG: OK. Well, one of the important exercises of finding common ground is defining the ground we do not have in common. OK. Let’s go through this one at a time.

Background checks – we already have them. If you’re talking about “universal background checks“, they have two huge problems; people to get guns illegally today, will still get them exactly the same way when they are “universal“. And there is no way for “Universal” background checks to work without a national registry of who has actually taken background checks, and for which firearms. If you want to ask for a registry, say it in is many words – and watch for the consequences.

I’m not sure which Obama era law you’re talking about; there are already laws against violently mentally ill people getting guns. It’s already supposed to be reported in some form to the NICS database. But the reporting is extremely uneven, as are the standards for who is considered “violently mentally ill”. Also, many state level laws have no due process; a malicious denunciation can and does deprive people of their rights. In what other area do people find that acceptable?

Banning certain types of guns – well, then you are anti-gun. “Assault weapon” bans had absolutely zero effect on crime from 1994 to2004; they are used in far less than 1% of all firearm homicides nationwide. It’s security theater and no more.

Not sure what you mean by “exploiting the Second Amendment“; it sounds like another way of saying “stop standing up for your rights”. I’d love a clarification.

Finally – you say “We have to start somewhere” – and we have! Were you aware that firearm homicides are down 50% in the last 20 years? That firearm homicides at schools are down 75%? And that’s almost entirely due to policies the NRA and us law abiding shooters have pressed for.

This is why when people ask for “commonsense gun laws“, I asked if they get into specific policies immediately. None of the ones that people on the left are calling for will do a bit of good. Ever.

LIBRELLE: Typical conservative. I give you some common ground, and you don’t accept it.

BERG: “Common ground” can’t be dictated! But I’ll do my bit, here: how about we start with getting the Department of Justice to take straw buyers seriously, and start intervening with at risk youth before they join gangs, and maybe come up with a “Red Flag” law that doesn’t trample due process?

LIBRELLE: But what do any of those have to do with school shootings?

BERG: School shootings are a tiny fraction of the homicides in this country, compared to gang violence and…

LIBRELLE: I don’t care about any of that. And you’re being a typical conservative. I’ve told you what our common ground will be…

BERG: You’re not “seeking common ground”; you’re trying to…

(But LIBRELLE’s attention has wandered already)

WAITRESS: Hey, si…er, ma’… (Looks at BERG, at a loss. BERG shrugs. WAITRESS continues) Would you like to have a seat?

LIBRELLE: Is your kimchi non-GMO?

(And SCENE)

PS: Every single one of Avery’s words is a very close paraphrase of something I’ve heard from liberals on social media or in person in the past week.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is mowing his lawn. He stops to clear some crud from around the blades as Avery LIBRELLE slowly walks up behind him, picking up a flattened pop cup from the sidewalk. LIBRELLE gets behind BERG and throws it at him. It catches the air and planes away from BERG, who notices the sound of it flopping to the ground.

BERG: Ah. So a former Marine and 2nd Amendment supporter who is a lot more like the type of people Democrats used to elect fifty years ago than anything east coast or metro Democrat party has nominated outside the Iron Range and West Virginia in decades, and who’d get doxxed into receivership or beaten into a coma if he tried to run for office in Minneapolis or Chicago or Manhattan, is your big bout of good news?

LIBRELLE: You’re racist.

BERG: Naturally. (Pays for his order, then notices somethingi) Er, Avery? Are you going to order something.

LIBRELLE: They think someone is coming (BERG reaches into his inside coat pocket) for their (BERG hands a trifolded piece of paper to LIBRELLE) guns….

LIBRELLE starts reading LInda Slocum’s House File 1322, which calls for sweeping confiscations of guns and the systematic extermination of the right of privacy. As LIBRELLE falls silent, LIBRELLE’s jaw keeps slowly flapping, like a beached fish, bill in hand.

Improbably, while standing at the hotel desk, he notices that Avery LIBRELLE has checked into the hotel just ahead of him. Worse, BERG notices LIBRELLE has just noticed him, and his about to strike up one of LIBRELLE’s usual “conversations”…

…when a text message crosses both of their phones simultaneously warning of a ballistic missile attack that is not a drill.

Pandemonium breaks out in the lobby, as customers being to panic over the thought of nuclear annihilation. But BERG instinctively begins moving for the most substantial cover he can find, when a subsequent message crosses his phone.

The message reads “The missile was shot down by a missile interceptor. In retaliation, a US Air Force bunker-buster bomb found and obliterated Kim Jong Un; a Republic of Korea Army Ranger team made contact with a rival faction in the DPRK government, and installed a regime that stood down the Nork Army and began seeking an end to the seventy year old impasse on the Korean Peninsula.”

BERG: Wow. That was quick.

BERG turns around.

Hey, Avery…

BERG stops short, noticing that LIBRELLE is in a bizarre permutation of a yoga pose, allowing the lips to be affixed to the butt.

BERG: Avery – what the …

LIBRELLE: I’ve been practicing this move for a nuclear war my whole life.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is in the lobby of the AMC Arden Hills, waiting to see “Godzilla Vs. Ayn Rand”. Stainding coincidentally in front of BERG are several members of the Minnesota 5th Congressional District LIbertarian Party; Stephanie Marie ANNAN, Community organizer,Garth MULLER, the Vice Chair for Ideological Purity, Carpal POX, the deputy chair,Victor VON SCLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE, Vice Chair for Education, and Anarchy GOATEEMONGER, inreach director. The group is talking; BERG is reluctantly overhearing the conversation.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting to see the movie “Darkest Hour” at a local theater. Avery LIBRELLE, walking out of a showing of “Brokeback Mountain Part 2: The Payback”, notices BERG before he notices…er, LIBRELLE.

LIBRELLE: Hey, Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Avery. What’s up?

LIBRELLE: Guns are out of control! The US has the highest murder rate of any industrIalized country!

BERG: Well, for starters, that’s not true – Brazil and Russia and South Africa have much higher murder rates than we do. But I’m curious – why do you limit it to “industralized” countries? Because the US murder rate, overall, is 94th in the world, per capita. Which is waaaaay down in the middle of the pack. Mexico and Russia’s murder rates are twice as nigh; Brazil’s five times; South Africa’s, seven times higher than ours.

LIBRELLE: But you should only compare apples to apples?

BERG: Why? When it comes to murder rates, what logical sense does that make? I mean, I know why your side does it – but why do you think that is?

LIBRELLE: You tell me!

BERG: Because Big Left only cares about dead white people. That’s why you never hear “gun safety” advocates talking about crime in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, the US Virgin Islands or Brazil, anymore than you do about places like Chicago, Newark, Camden, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton or Oakland.

LIBRELLE: Why would we talk about the murder rate in Chicago, Newark, Camden, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton or Oakland? We should compare apples and apples.

LIBRELLE: They benefit those who need it most! The poorest and most vulnerable!

BERG: Let me ask you this, Avery. Let’s say that I give you coupons, in payment for waving a sign around at a rally. Those coupons can be used for one thing – to get mint tea at Whole Foods.

LIBRELLE: Mmm. . Whole Foods.

BERG: Right. Now, I give you two coupons. One for every four hours of sign waving.

LIBRELLE: OK.

BERG: But Alida Messinger gives you four coupons. That’s a coupon every two hours.

LIBRELLE: I’ll work for Alida.

BERG: Right. But Whole Foods only has one bag of mint tea left in the store. At all. How many coupons is it going to cost?

LIBRELLE: I don’t get it.

BERG: You have coupons good for tea. But there is no tea. So all your coupons are are pieces of paper given to you in exchange for a day of waving signs.

LIBRELLE: The correct answer, then, is that my labor – sign-waving – is of intrinsic value, and should be rewarded with tea.

BERG: Not to Whole Foods, it’s not. The coupons are just pieces of paper exchangaed for slices of time you spent, er, working. The sign didn’t get waved twice as much, or twice as hard, or… (looks at LIBRELLE) twice as effectively. You just got more slips of paper. But the tea is all gone.

LIBRELLE: Right, but I still have three more coupons!

BERG: Which are of no value. Like the 40% “pay raise” in worthless money that the Venezuelan “poor” will get out of this “raise”.

LIBRELLE: But when they throw off the shackles of the international capistalists, they’ll all be rich!

BERG: Right. Just like you’ll have three bags of tea when the truck finally arrives at Whole Foods. Hey – why are you on my porch.

SCENE: Dayton, Ohio – 1904. A group of protesters – young activists from Snofe Lakes, California – chant slogans in front of the Leach and Bitwell Auto Company; “Keep The Roads Democratic!”, “What do we want? Road Neutrality. When do we want it? Now!” and “Cars are a Public Utility”. After a few moments, Arthur LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.

LIBRELLE: What we seek is highway neutrality. We demand that the government treat cars and roads as the public utility they truly are. That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a car like this (LIBRELLE points to a 1904 Leach and Bitwell roadster – a two seater with a hand-crank starter that is basically a glorified go-kart with a two cylinder engine and a couple of chairs which lists at $5,000 – which is about $200,000 2017 dollars) – and their children, and their children’s children, as long as California is the capitol fo the horseless carriage industry. Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better car!

(Hezekiah MERG chimes in): But if you treat the budding auto industry like a utility, there’ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Henry Ford or Louis Chevrolet, to respond to the market demand and build a cars that, before long, will be every big as good as the specimen you see here, for a fraction of the price.

LIBRELLE: (Scoffing as the young people from Snofe Lakes laugh uproariously) Oh, it is to laugh! The idea that people from Detroit will ever build cars, or that technology will ever surpass what we see in front of us! No, indeed; let us regulate cars and roads like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the crown jewel of Los Angeles’s transportation system, our streetcars!

SCENE: Walll Street, – 1983. A group of protesters – young activists from Slough Fnakes, Vermont – chant slogans in front of the Motorola headquasrters building, wielding protest signs; “Keep Cell Phones Democratic!”, “What do we want? Cell Neutrality. When do we want it? Now!” and “Car Phones are a Public Utility”. After a few moments, Ashton LIBRELLE climbs up on the soapbox.

LIBRELLE: What we seek is car phone neutrality. We demand that the government treat car phones and suitcase phones as the public utility they truly are. That way, in thirty years, your children will be able to buy a mobile phone like this (LIBRELLE holds up a 1984 Motoirola cell phone – the size of at World War II walkie talkie, that cost $10,000 in 2017 dollars plus $1,000 a month and $4 a minute for talk times) – and their children, and their children’s children, as long as Motorola remains unchallenged atop the car phone industry. Nobody will be able, using just more money, to buy a better phone!

(Hank MERG chimes in): But if you treat the budding cellular communiations industry like a utility, there’ll be no impetus for someone like, say, Steve Jobs or Victor Droid, to respond to the market demand and build device that, before long, will not only do everything the phone your holding does thousands of times better, but do it for about one percent of the inllation adjusted cost. Indeed, in 24 years, I predict that non-profits will be giving away phones that are millions of times more powerful per dollar, and criminals will buy them to use once and throw away!.

LIBRELLE: (Scoffing as the young people fromSlough Fnakes laugh uproariously) Oh, it is to laugh! The idea that phones will be a commodity, like Pet Rocks, or that technology will ever surpass what we see in front of us! No, indeed; let us regulate car and suitcase phones like utilities, that they may ever be as successful as the public education system!

Scene: a cluttered office, a fat, balding man chewing a cigar, reading a script and scowling at it. A young man steps into the doorway and raps on the door, three times, quickly.

Writer: Boss, I’ve got a great idea for a new show. It’s a political thriller, got action, intrigue, it’s great.

Boss: Yeah? Siddown and lay it out for me.

Boss tosses the script he was reading onto his desk and leans back in his chair, studying the young man. Young man sits down, butt on the edge of the seat, and leans forward, speaking eagerly

Writer: okay, there’s the guy, see? And he works for the FBI. He’s a true patriot, he hates the way the country is going and he wants to help a good candidate get elected. He makes a donation like everybody in the office, but he wants to do more. All the sudden, he finds himself assigned to investigate his favorite candidate for breaking the law. But he doesn’t want to do it, see? But he has to, see? So there’s dramatic tension.

Boss: yeah, but the law is the law. What’s he gonna do?

Writer: that’s the cool part. He interviews the candidate but he “forgets” to put her under oath. So none of her answers can be used against her, right? And there’s a suspicious death tied to the charges but he knows this candidate has a long trail of suspicious deaths and shady dealings so he’s afraid she might be involved with this one, too. So he doesn’t want to investigate that, see? But he’s torn about it, see, because maybe she really is as crooked as the rest of them. But maybe she’s not, and besides, her opponent is a real jerk. So he calls the death a “robbery gone bad” and when his boss is going to make a press announcement saying the candidate broke the law, our guy changes it to say she did NOT break the law.

Boss: wait, why wouldn’t the boss notice the change?

Writer: the boss isn’t a cop, he’s a political hack, a time-serving moron. So he goes along with the charade and the candidate gets away with the crime and stays in the election.

Boss: okay, weak, but we can work with it.

Writer: wait, it gets better! His candidate loses the election.

Boss: what the hell? How’s that help? The show’s over.

Writer: no, no, it’s just getting started. The candidate was supposed to win, see? All the polls said so. All the experts said so. She was so far ahead, she didn’t even campaign the last week, the election was in the bag. She booked a hall and ordered fireworks and had her victory speech written and when she lost, it was stunning. The talking heads on tv were stunned. The losing candidate was drunk two days, couldn’t give a concession speech. Total disaster. And meanwhile, the smug jerk who won the election is all over Twitter rubbing it in, offering her five cents on the dollar for the fireworks she doesn’t need anymore.

Writer: Yeah, yeah, but our guy, remember him? He’s in the FBI. They see all kinds of wacko stuff, all kinds of nuts and goofballs with conspiracy theories. So he’s devastated that his gal lost and the jerk won and he’s sitting at his desk moping when he glances at this file on his desk. Some kook claims the jerk was in cahoots with the Russians to help him steal the election and he stayed in a Russian hotel where a team of hookers gave him a golden shower right on the hotel bed.

Boss: whoa, whoa, we can’t put that stuff on television. Not in prime time.

Writer: okay, so maybe we don’t show it on screen

Boss: but maybe a special episode on cable? Pay per view? Hmmmm.

Writer: yeah, yeah! Like that. And anyway, so our guy, he sees this folder and he knows it’s bullshit but he thinks “If only the public knew what a jerk that guy is.” Just then his boss walks by and says “I’m headed to brief the President-Elect, anything new I should know?” And all the sudden, on impulse, our guy hands his boss the folder and says “You might want to warn him this stuff is going around, so he doesn’t get blind-sided.” The boss, being a dope, doesn’t realize it’s a set-up, he thinks our guy is being all noble and professional, so the boss goes right along. But one of the long-term staff people in the President’s briefing sees the dossier is political dynamite and leaks it to his buddies in the press. Ka-boom, huge political outrage, our guy’s losing candidate gets cheered up, the president-elect looks like an idiot, our guy is grinning like crazy.

Boss: and then?

Writer: and then things get interesting. The losing candidate’s political party seizes on the Russian Collusion angle and demands an investigation. The new Attorney General is a another political appointee, not used to how the game is played in the bureaucracy, so he recuses himself.

Boss: excuses himself?

Writer: no, recuses. He steps aside and lets the long-term staffers handle it. And they all hate the new President. So the staffers convince the new President the only way to clear his name is to appoint a special investigator. And they recommend their old boss, who they assure him is a straight shooter, which he is – straight in your back. But the new President doesn’t know that, see, so the new President goes along with it.

Boss: inside baseball. boring.

Writer: no, wait! The special investigator hates the new President, too. And he hires a team of assistants to help him, all of them hate the new President. And here’s the best part – he decides that for his top assistant on the team, he needs the guy who knows the most about the collusion. He needs the guy who discovered the folder. He needs OUR GUY! Our guy is now the top assistant on the team investigating the new President.

Boss: okay, more interesting. Keep going

Writer: so our guy is only part of the investigation, he can’t go after the President directly. But he remembers that during the campaign, his team used a little “creative phrasing” to convince a judge to let them wiretap some people in the jerk’s campaign. And one of those people is now the new President’s aide. Our guy drops by the aide’s office to chat and just happens to ask some questions about one of the wiretapped conversations. He doesn’t tell the aide he’s under investigation, the aide doesn’t have a lawyer present, the conversation isn’t recorded, but our guy goes back to the office and dummies up some notes in the file as to what our guy claims the aide said.

Boss: so?

Writer: so our guy walks into the special investigator’s office and says “Hey, the President’s aide lied to me. Here’s what he said on the wiretap and here’s what he told me in person. He’s a liar. We can prosecute him for lying and maybe get him to roll over on his boss, testify against the President.” So the special prosecutor is liking that and ready to run with it but our guy screws up. See, he’s married but he’s also having an affair with an FBI lawyer – that’s the love interest and we can get some steamy scenes out of that, too – and our guy sends his lover some texts bragging about his scam. But somehow the texts leak

Boss: how?

Writer: I’m working on that. But anyway, the texts leak and the special investigator finds out our guy is bent so his testimony is worthless, but the special investigator really hates the President so he quietly reassigns our guy out of the way for a bit while he tries to finesse the aide into pleading guilty so he can get something to use against the President.

Boss: wait – what happened to our guy? I thought this show was about him?

Writer: he’s reassigned to Human Resources to lay low until it blows over. The special investigator temporarily becomes the star of the show. It’s like when the main star is pregnant so the co-star gets a few episodes, you know?

Boss; I gotta hand it to ya, kid, I really do. Ya got a terrific imagination. But this stuff, it’s too much. It’s over the top. One guy at the center of a conspiracy to take down the President? Nobody would ever believe it. And what the hell kind of name is Strzok? Fuggedaboutit, kid. Get the hell out of my office.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking out of the Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis. Surrounded by hipsters and hippies as far as the eye can see, he tacitly wonders what the hell all these pretenders have done with his old neighborhood.

As BERG approaches the door, Avery LIBRELLE walks in, early for the next showing of “Antifa: The Musical”.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Avery. What’s…

LIBRELLE: Linnae Tweeden danced like a slut.

BERG: Er, yeah. And…?

LIBRELLE: She was a cheesecale pinup girl.

BERG: So…?

LIBRELLE: She kissed other men and patted their backsides.

BERG: And so…?

LIBRELLE: So Al Franken didn’t do anything wrong in that photo.

BERG: Even though he admitted to it himself.

LIBRELLE: Senator Franken, peace be upon him, has no more control over his utterances than he has over what his hands do in the presence of a scantily-dressed wanton slut.

BERG: Wait, wait, wait – so if a random guy at the office were to say “that woman is dressed provocatively, so I’m going to go grope her…”

LIBRELLE: It’s sexual assault. The moral equivalent of rape.

BERG: But if Al Franken does it…

LIBRELLE: She’s a slut who provoked the lusts of his innocent victim, Al Franken.

BERG: So… (searches for words)

LIBRELLE: Also, she’s a Republican.

BERG: So that makes it OK.

LIBRELLE: I’m not saying it’s OK…

BERG: Oh, OK. Thank goodness…

LIBRELLE: But it’s OK.

BERG: OK. We’re getting somewhere. So – men in general look with any lust in their heart upon a woman, no matter how she’s dressed…?

LIBRELLE: Rapists who should be chemically neutered.

BERG: Al Franken, who touched a woman in a leering provocative manner with out consent?